Feature Request - Unwatched Image Overlay

[gcw07 347]

The Roku is a great little device, but while developing the channel, there have been several short comings I've come across. One of those short comings is the inability to offer any type of watched status indicator. There is no way to place an overlay over a poster or image, to indicate that this movie/episode/series has not been watched. I've talked to a couple people and have had several suggestions (larger posters, different color text) on how to display some sort of indicator, but all of them so far are not possible within the Roku system. So what I'm asking for is an additional optional parameter added to the "Items/{id}/Images" section. Basically to add in a un-watched overlay to the image. So something like a "ShowUnwatched" parameter that when passed in would add another image overlay on top of the requested image. Something along the lines of how the plugin catalog shows that a plugin is premium. What would be really nice is if you could also pass in a "UnwatchedCount" and have it show the number. Either would be great and would allow me to actually show some sort of visual indication that an item is unwatched. This is just a request and I understand if you wish to turn it down. Just figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. Thanks.

[Luke 37140]

it's a possibility, yea.

[MrWebsmith 598]

anything that can be done to get the watched status onto roku im all in favor of.. thanks guys!

[Luke 37140]

i think roku has a chance to be our most adopted client, so we may have to prioritize some development for it. it will be very exciting for mb3 when it goes public.

[gcw07 347]

Thanks for considering it. Once I get the Music section in, I plan to have it move more into an Open Beta like you guys have done with MBC and MB Server.

[sinjen 36]

The Netflix client handles this (partly), by displaying a watched percentage. You might be able to add that without much trouble.

[gcw07 347]

Unfortunately I don't have Netflix, so don't know what it looks like. I do know that Netflix and other big names have access to API items that as a normal channel developer, I don't. So they could be using something special.

[sinjen 36]

Unfortunately I don't have Netflix, so don't know what it looks like. I do know that Netflix and other big names have access to API items that as a normal channel developer, I don't. So they could be using something special.

 

Netflix is similar to what Luke has done in the webclient. Have a look there for a visual. I think what he's done there could work for the roku too.

[gcw07 347]

Without seeing where they placed it on the Roku though, I can't determine if it is actually something I can do or not. I've searched pictures trying to find anything and don't see it. Would love to see a photo if you have one.

 

To me the requested feature would be the most visible and so far the only way I have found that will work. If we are going to do a number count, it is more visible to just say 16 over the unwatched icon, instead of trying to do a percentage or some sort of percentage bar. Those work great for a client where you can hover over it, but not so much from 10 feet away.

[sinjen 36]

Without seeing where they placed it on the Roku though, I can't determine if it is actually something I can do or not. I've searched pictures trying to find anything and don't see it. Would love to see a photo if you have one.

 

To me the requested feature would be the most visible and so far the only way I have found that will work. If we are going to do a number count, it is more visible to just say 16 over the unwatched icon, instead of trying to do a percentage or some sort of percentage bar. Those work great for a client where you can hover over it, but not so much from 10 feet away.

 

Well, I've been trying to take screenshots all morning of the Netflix UI, but there must be some bug with the functionality on my Roku 2. From the Utilities page, I am able to take the shot and the page states "Screenshot ok". But the image links beside the statement are broken. They don't lead to the image taken (if it was actually taken that is). All that said, I just became aware of some changes Netflix has made to their UI. They used to display a bar that indicated how far along you were into an item or collection (like a season of a tv series), however I now only see that bar underneath each TV episode. It seems to have been removed from all other areas So even if I could get you a screenshot, I guess it wouldn't be that helpful. Incidentally, I believe you should be able to get a 2 week trial for Netflix for free. Have a look here: http://moneyning.com/coupons/netflix-coupon-free-trial/

 

I'll keep trying to get the screenshot functionality working in the meantime.

 

-Sinjen

[gcw07 347]

That feature will never work for what your trying. The screenshot feature from the Utilities page is intended to take a screenshot of the side loaded channel you installed on the box. Which is why it is probably just creating an empty image because you don't have one installed or are not running it at the time you are taking the picture. It will have to be with maybe just a cellphone or something.

 

I used my Netflix trial up years ago, so that won't work. Sorry.

[gcw07 347]

I think I know what you mean for the display progress bar. And actually that method will work for displaying TV episodes partially watched. I implemented that bar for that. It does not however show anything for items that haven't been played yet or for movies. It only works for showing partial progress on TV episodes. Useful for that purpose, but still doesn't fix the overall problem of displaying status at a glance.

[gcw07 347]

Just a quick bump to see if this is still a possibility of getting added. I spent 2 weeks in July trying to see if I could build a custom layout (to do things like this internally) and after all that time there was no way to make it fast. I could build one, but it was super slow and always felt like you were behind when navigating around. It definitely would not be a good thing from the user perspective. An unwatched count would be great, but even just a simple unwatched overlay would be better then what is on the Roku now. Thanks.

[Luke 37140]

Yea it is, but the trickiness is more in the api impact than the actual drawing of the image. The image will now vary based on user data. All the developer guidelines up to this point are that you can cache forever as long as the tag value is part of the url. So I would need to see how all of that is impacted.

[gcw07 347]

Sounds good. Doesn't it do something similar when you pass in a height. It resizes the image down to the appropriate size maintaining the aspect. I would assume that ignores the cached item since it is creating a new resized image. That is unless it is grabbing cached image, then resizing down for display.

[Luke 37140]

Yea but the height is part of the url, that means the client can cache the response forever. If they want a new height, that means a new url. Making the images dynamic based on other state will represent a shift in that thinking.

 

Unless we have you pass in the data then it could remain stateless, so that's an option.

[gcw07 347]

Oh, no. I fully intended that it would be new query options with flags or data passed in through the GET variables. So for instance if you were to do an unwatched item, you might pass in:

 

unwatched=true

 

Then if you wanted an actual unwatched count instead of just a basic graphic, you might pass in:

 

unwatchedCount=10

 

Not sure about the naming and if we would want to add a watched / unwatched flag (the red and green badges that other clients use). I never meant that the server would have to come up with that data on it's own. Sorry for the confusion.

[Luke 37140]

Exactly, yea. So if all that data is passed in as opposed to retrieved, then the output is always the same for a given url and the caching can stay in place.

[gcw07 347]

Yeah. I don't expect the server to do much more then just take the base image, add the badge (with the possible text number passed in) and returns it in one image. No calculations on the part of the server to lookup any of the data on it's own.

[ebr 14944]

This would still have the impact of potentially exploding the cache on the server end. Could get quite expensive when you start to extrapolate all the different counts and sizes.

[gcw07 347]

Isn't the cache already fairly large with all the various image sizes and treated/untreated artwork anyways?

[ebr 14944]

Isn't the cache already fairly large with all the various image sizes and treated/untreated artwork anyways?

 

Yes it is and doing this would potentially apply a multiplier to it -possibly multiple multipliers (unwatched count + size) such that it could expand by another order of magnitude and I'm not sure that would be worth it. A lot of folks use SSDs as their cache drive and they are usually only 60-120 gig.

 

Just a factor to consider...

[gcw07 347]

Would it actually increase it much though. I mean instead of me fetching the single resized/untreated image, I would be fetching the resized/untreated/overlay image. So it would be replacing one cached item for another potentially.

[gcw07 347]

I do see your point on the count changing though. That would cause different cached images being created. Could we just not cache the counted images? Just thinking of ideas of how to add this without having a large impact.

[gcw07 347]

Thinking of where counts would be used. TV Series is the main one. Potentially Boxsets would be the only other one. I don't think genres would be one. I don't use Season images, so nothing there. Count can even be left out if that would cause too much of an impact. Just a unwatched would be better then what is now.